We talked about Mimobots about a year ago – cute designed USB drives – and they’re still popular. Now Rob Walker in his Consumed column tries to analyze the popularity for designed USB drives. Rob says:

Cheap, boring devices don’t sit still for very long these days before somebody comes along to breathe new life — and profit margins — into them, through clever aesthetics. So it is with flash drives, which have lately become the raw, functional device onto which a variety of design identities has been layered. The most compelling example may be Mimobots, the creations of Mimoco, a “designer-toy-studio-meets-consumer-electronics brand” based in Boston that has pulled the drives into the context of collectibles.